Sionil Jose, Austin Coates and Rizal's biography / Other books published

Several Rizal biographies have been written but Austin Coates’ “Rizal  Filipino Nationalist and Patriot” is the best, declares F. Sionil Jose.

Born in London in 1922, Coates made a study of Rizal’s 1891-92 stay in Hongkong while he was Assistant Colonial Secretary. He was an administrator, diplomat and advisor on Chinese affairs until 1962. A Knight Grand Officer of Rizal, he was guest at the 1961 International Congress on Rizal in Manila.

Before I dwell on Coates’ book, here are a few notes on its sender, F. Sionil Jose. A literary icon, he is a National Artist in Literature. His multi-novel Rosales Saga, and other novels, translated into 20 languages, are read worldwide.

On him, James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly writes: “Like being on the road with Rabelais . . . America has no counterpart — no one who is simultaneously a prolific novelist, a social and political organizer, an editor and a journalist, a small-scale entrepreneur . . . Jose’s identity has equipped him to be fully sensitive to his nation’s miseries without succumbing, like many of his characters, to corruption or despair.”

Other quotes on Jose: “One of the (Philippines’) most distinguished men of letters.” — Times / “The foremost novelist in English . . . (he deserves) a much wider readership.” — The New York Review of Books /“Considered by many to be Asia’s most likely candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature . . .” — The Singapore Straits Times.

Jose is founder and secretary general of the Philippines’ PEN (Publishers, Novelists, Essayists) Center. PEN meetings are held at his Solidaridad Bookshop, an “intellectual “locus” hallowed by the presence of such stalwarts as Norman Mailer, Gunther Grass, Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, Filipino literary giants Nick Joaquin, the Tiempos, Bien Lumbera, Elmer Ordoñez, et al. PEN seminars aim to elevate the literary standards of Filipino writers in English and Pilipino.

To return to Coates, he is conversant with European history, American history and Asian history, all of which he correlates in his description of Rizal, comparing him to Gandhi, Tagore and Sun Yat-Sen — all four of whom “remoulded the thinking of a continent” — adding: “Of all the national leaders of Asia, Rizal was the most considerable, balanced and far-seeing. Although the least known, Rizal was the most remarkable. Rizal’s is the most documented life of any Asian of the 19th century, perhaps of any Asian ever.”

“Unamuno calls Rizal the Tagalog Christ and the parallel between them is inevitable.” Like Christ, Rizal realized he had a mission which he fulfilled magnificently, saying seconds after he was executed, “Consummatum est” just as Christ had exclaimed before He breathed His last.

Coates deeply admires Rizal’s chastity although he was attracted to several women, as also the strong, indestructible unity and solidarity of the Rizal family through its countless trials and tribulations: the loss of properties, the unceasing harassment of the government authorities and the friars, the imprisonment of Rizal’s mother, Doña Teodora.

Two facts stand out: First, Rizal made no retraction; second, he never married Josephine Bracken, but gave her lasting tribute in his final poem Mi Ultimo Adios.

Rizal Day has come and gone, but as Coates observes: “Rizal the man stands among those few who are companions to no particular epoch or continent, who belong to the world, and whose lives have a universal message. In his own country, he continues to be revered as a national hero, and has had greater influence on his people than any other man.”

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